Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Advent Calendar Holiday Happenings

Well all my close relatives were born well away from Christmas, the closest being my sister, and she was born March 31, so a long way from the Christmas holidays.

This is a picture of my parents wedding in my grandmothers house January 14, 1942. My dad Claude Hansen was 35 then and obviously single, but since it was so soon after Pearl Harbor was bombed they were drafting single men to age 36. Pop had been to a CMTC (Civilian Military Training Camp)camp in the 1920s, and he said about all they did was march, and he had bad feet and did not fit well in the Army issued boots, so he went out to Geiger Air Force Base and enlisted hoping that in the Army Air Corps they might fly somewhere instead of marching everywhere. He received his orders to report to Geiger and wanted to get married before he shipped off to war. My mom Margaret Kelly and pop went down to the auditors office to get a license, and they waved the three day waiting period so they could get married before he left. They got married and after the marriage they had the marriage certificate recorded at the auditors office because that was the law. Pop went off to serve in the 354th Service Squadron, first to Ephrata, Washington, then England, Africa and eventually Italy. Because he was older than most of the men in the service by then he got rotated home, so he was at Ft. Dix, on VE day and back here in Spokane by VJ day. Most of the members of our local genealogical society (EWGS) know I do research for others that send queries to EWGS for local look ups. A few years ago I was in the courthouse looking up a marriage for a query and the index listed two marriage certificate numbers. I had done a lot of marriage certificate look ups by then so I was really surprised by two numbers. A little note here, the auditors office files all the marriage certificates by number, so did they get married twice? When I got to the actual record I found out the problem. Each file during this time had two documents, one was the application they filled out when they applied for the license and the second document was the marriage certificate signed by the bride, groom, witnesses and the minister and was recorded after the marriage and both usually had the same recording number. Well for the couple I was looking for they had a different number on the application and the certificate because another couple also had different numbers on their certificate and application. Both had just switched recording numbers. Turns out the second couple that had their numbers mixed up was my parents. I did not check the index for them to see if they were listed with two certificate numbers but I bet the index also shows two numbers for my parents also. Today all the certificates are online for Spokane county, but none of the applications have made it online yet.Since their anniversary was after Christmas we always had a nice celebration for them and never mixed in with Christmas or Christmas gifts.

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About Me

I am Charles Hansen and started genealogy in 1991 after a family reunion. Started online on Prodigy in 1991 and stayed until Prodigy folded. Today I am the researcher for Eastern Washington Genealogical Society
charles_hansen@prodigy.net